[HN Gopher] Tom Davies has become a beloved icon of GeoGuessr
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Tom Davies has become a beloved icon of GeoGuessr
Author : fortran77
Score : 93 points
Date : 2022-06-25 20:19 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| miralize wrote:
| Honestly, one of the last people I'd have thought would have been
| profiled by the New Yorker. And Geoguessr is only one part of his
| channels charm. His channel reminds me of early Youtube,
| authentic & entertaining.
|
| If you havent watched his "How to not travel through Europe"
| series, its what all travel shows should aspire to be. Truly
| unique
| baicunko wrote:
| I have to admit that Tom Davies is quite fun to watch actually.
| His guesses are really extraordinary
| dijit wrote:
| I found him on YouTube originally because I was looking for
| content of my home country (feeling very homesick during the
| pandemic, I live in another country than where I was raised).
|
| I kept coming back to his channel because it feels fresh,
| authentic and he is very good at talking though how he's
| thinking. Meaning you go on a little detective journey with him.
|
| It helps that he's also quite genial, so it feels extremely
| wholesome.
|
| He's very deserving of his popularity, but he still feels like a
| bloke you could drink with.
| odiroot wrote:
| The man is such a treasure. Very entertaining and with a great
| sense of humour.
|
| I've learned so much about different countries from him.
| pg_bot wrote:
| If you watch the top Geoguessers it looks like magic. They
| immediately know where in the world they are within seconds.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=275VkeAlu90
| antiterra wrote:
| There are so many clues as to where you are and a far more
| limited area of coverage than you might think. It's not
| uncommon to recognize a road or neighborhood from a previous
| game.
|
| The 'meta' includes everything from the tape on the camera
| mount bars, the reflective patterns on bollards, to the quality
| of the image encoding.
|
| That, plus a subconscious 'feel' you start to develop goes a
| very very long way in a relatively short amount of time. I
| sometimes feel like I could tell I was in Singapore or not even
| if I was only allowed to look at my feet.
|
| I got very good at it, but I lost my appetite for the game when
| Ukraine was invaded. Before that, I'd be joking about stuff
| like how the wooden window frames in Russia were much fancier
| and that's how you could tell them apart.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| I've played some free games on GeoGuessr and this is exactly
| it. After a while you just start to recognize things like the
| same Google car on the same wide desert highway, hello Dubai.
| Even the exact same spots come up often.
|
| Then again, some places are so far off into the bush that it
| takes some routine just to figure out which continent you're
| on.
| googlryas wrote:
| Something to keep in mind is that they aren't playing random
| points on the map, they're playing fixed maps with say 20,000
| locations in them. They play them to the point that they
| recognize many of them. Like magic, but a little less than if
| it really was just a random point on the globe they could
| recognize instantaneously.
| krick wrote:
| Yeah, it was actually kind of disappointing to understand
| that after buying the subscription. I mean, Google Maps
| coverage is far from being complete as it is (and obviously
| is not going to be in the observable future even for places
| where it technically could be, like most of the China), and
| if you are playing the game to learn something, being just
| more playable in duels is not what you want. New places
| appear from time to time, so I'm not completely sure if they
| do that on purpose to make game easier, or there are some
| real reasons to do so. And if it's ever going to be better.
| alphabetting wrote:
| He's hilarious. Great content creator.
| tux1968 wrote:
| Direct link to his channel:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/GeoWizard/videos
| oittaa wrote:
| GeoGuessr has really blown up with the "Duels" mode. You really
| should check some of Tom's latest videos on YouTube if you
| haven't already.
|
| Surprisingly I have to give some credit to YouTube algorithm
| since I got recommended other entertaining videos from big
| creators, that I don't usually follow. For example this one where
| Ludwig plays with GeoRainBolt.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqwSQzlJozw
| kthxb wrote:
| His "straight line missions" on YouTube are really entertaining.
| The concept (crossing some piece of land in a completely straight
| line) is simple, but leads to quite some interesting challenges
| in practice. His brillant story-telling makes the videos very
| compelling.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| A lot of the fun comes from how unqualified he is for such
| journeys. He's just a regular dude who puts in some
| preparation. It would be a lot less interesting if he was some
| sort of trained survivalist or even just a hardcore
| outdoorsman.
|
| Probably because he's English I think of his missions like
| Bilbo marching off to the Lonely Mountain. No idea what's he's
| in for, but he'll make it fun in the telling of it.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| One of his videos had some _don't try this yourself_
| disclaimer (it was a particular straight line video where
| they faced a lot of challenges), which confused me. Is he
| really some kind of professional (at something outdoorsey)?
| Because that's what that kind of a disclaimer seems to imply,
| or the way I tend to interpret it.
| anamexis wrote:
| He got into some hot water with the police at one point for
| crossing an active railway. Adding the disclaimer may have
| been part of his informal "plea deal," so to speak.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I just discovered this entire world from reading this New Yorker
| article. Having a great time trying some of the easier ones
| (world cities, etc.)
| blindseer wrote:
| Get in!
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Wow seeing Tom (Geowizard) get this popular is crazy. Definitely
| deserving though because his content is very entertaining.
|
| Part of what I think makes him so entertaining is that he's
| expanded beyond just playing the GeoGuessr game.
|
| For the uninitiated he's currently planning to dribble a soccer
| ball across the UK from coast to coast and then later this summer
| he's going to attempt to hitchhike the length of the US east
| coast while completing various fan submitted challenges (part of
| his "how not to travel" series).
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| > The charming bloke that dominates GeoGuessr
|
| Not really. He is a good player, but not in the same league as
| the top players, which is something he readily admits. He isn't
| interested in learning the minutiae (bollard styles in different
| countries etc.) necessary to get to that level.
|
| People watch him because of his personality and sense of humour.
| His most popular videos aren't even GeoGuessr related at all!
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| His videos where he tries to find the location where a photo was
| taken are my absolute favorite. It's a cool mix of history and
| geography. https://youtu.be/Yt_STtlRhB0
|
| I'd recommend watching them! It's really fun to follow along and
| join in the detective work. I didn't have any success, but it
| gave me a good excuse to explore some new places with Google Maps
| that I never would've thought to look at.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| There are better Geoguessrs on YouTube but you might like certain
| personalities better.
| krick wrote:
| Funny to see this downvoted. I have watched Davies for a long
| time now, and I really like both the style of the videos and
| his ability, but "being better in a game" is kind of an
| objective metric, and the fact that these "writers" at
| newyorker tend to use such titles as "X who DOMINATES Y"
| (naturally, because it sells better) doesn't take away from the
| fact that Tom is far from "dominating" the game.
| speps wrote:
| Awesome channel! I don't think anyone mentioned yet that he
| composes music for his videos too:
| https://amynedd.bandcamp.com/album/16-bit-adventure
| carlos-menezes wrote:
| Tom is one of my favourite creators. Such an entertaining dude.
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